Insufficient air pressure within a pneumatic tire of a vehicle at least will result in awkward driving, such as more gas consumption, lower tire endurability and shorter tire operation life, and even worse, will cause a flat tire which endangers passengers' life. A tire monitoring system can assist a driver at any time inside the car to check the tire conditions, such as tire pressure, tire temperature, etc., thereby effectively increasing the vehicle safety.
FIG. 1 schematically illustrates a vehicle 10 equipped with a conventional tire condition sensing system 11. The system 11 includes a plurality of tire condition sensing apparatuses 12, 14, 16 and 18 are installed on four respective tires, and antennas 22, 24, 26 and 28 are mounted on the positions of a vehicle main body adjacent to the tire condition sensing apparatuses 12, 14, 16 and 18 respectively, and the antennas 22, 24, 26 and 28 are connected to a receiver 30 (having a signal-receiving circuit) located in the vehicle main body. While in operation, each of the tire condition sensing apparatuses in turn emits a tire condition signal wirelessly. After the antennas 22, 24, 26 and 28 receive the signal, the signal is transmitted to the receiver 30, and then the driver is informed of the tire condition via a display apparatus (not shown).
When the receiver 30 receives the signal, the tire condition sensing system 11 has to fist distinguish the location of the tire condition sensing apparatus emitting the signal, so as to notify the driver that which tire the signal belongs to. Generally, with a conventional skill for recognizing the relative positions between the tire condition sensing apparatus and the tires, an operator has to perform the step of deflating and inflating the tires individually, so as to force each tire condition sensing apparatus to continuously emit the signal regarding tire condition due to the rapid pressure drop of each tire, and then the signal is decoded to obtain an identification code of one certain tire condition sensing apparatus, thus establishing the corresponding relationship between the tire condition sensing apparatuses and the tire locations. Therefore, while in operation, when the receiver receivers a signal, the identification code of the signal can be obtained after decoding, and then the location of the tire emitting the signal can be known via the aforementioned corresponding relationship between the tire condition sensing apparatuses and the tire locations.
However, the aforementioned conventional skill cannot be automatically performed, but needs manual operation. To deflate and inflate each individual tire is quite time-consuming, and the locations of tire condition sensing apparatuses have to be re-learned every time when the tires are replaced or switched. Thus, the conventional skill is quite inefficient and takes a lot of time and effort, so that the consumers' requirements cannot be satisfied.
Hence, there is an urgent need to develop a method for locating tire condition sensing apparatuses, thereby automatically recognizing the locations of tire condition sensing apparatuses and greatly shortening the recognition time, thus effective saving manpower and material resource, and meeting the consumers' requirements.